Hurricane
by moonshadow2012
Summary: "Would you kill to save a life? Would you kill to prove you're right?" Helen's quick-thinking leads to a different lie, and that leads to a different timeline altogether. T for safety and implications.
1. Part 1

_Would you kill to save a life?_

_Would you kill to prove you're right?_

~ _Hurricane_, 30 Seconds to Mars

Stephen moved forward, lifting Helen into a tight embrace in one fluid motion. He felt her thin, muscled arms wrap around him, the hilt of her dagger resting solidly on his back.

"What is this place?"

"I don't know. Lester's people brought me here."

"What did he do to Cutter?"

"There are creatures here, Stephen. He was killed."

"You saw it?"

Helen could hear the hope in his voice. Keeping her lying face straight, she nodded. Stephen turned away.

"Where's Lester?"

When he turned around, Helen could see the murderous rage bubbling just beneath the surface of her lover's face. She could see how hard he fought to keep it under control. She hesitated, calculating. She couldn't have this.

"He's gone." Helen whispered. "He left as soon as the creatures escaped. I don't know where he is now."

Stephen turned, slamming a fist into a metal locker. When he looked back at Helen, he let his fist fall to his side, but didn't unclench it. His knuckles were white with anger and pain.

"We have to go, Stephen." Helen pleaded, moving closer. "We can't stay here to be eaten by the creatures." She lifted her hand to his face. "I promise you, Lester will pay for what he's done. But not now, not today. We have to survive to repay him." She could see she was getting to him. Stephen's problem was that he wanted so badly to believe her that his longing overrode his suspicions at how easy it all had been. "He's not here anymore but we're going to find him." Helen assured the young man determinedly. "He killed your friends, Stephen."

That did it. Stephen drew in a breath of air, and Helen could see the change come over him as he moved from his murderous intent to determination to get her and himself out alive.

"Let's go."

"Jenny, Abby, Connor." Cutter jogged up to the foursome – the three ARC operatives and the amateur con artist – internally congratulating himself on figuring out how to cage the creatures and get out before the velociraptor could have eaten him. It had been simple, really. Push the button to set off the noise and run, closing the door behind him. He had remembered Helen mentioning how the feeding system worked and deduced that the creatures would associate the sound with food.

"Cutter!"

"Cutter!"

"Nick!" Jenny rushed up to him, wrapping her arms around his neck before pulling back abruptly, brushing a strand of hair behind her ear, embarrassed. Cutter smirked affectionately at her. "Sorry." She murmured. Cutter remembered suddenly that she hadn't been in the loop during his show that he'd put on for Helen.

"You know I was lying when I said I was still in love with my wife, right?" He whispered. Jenny looked up and smiled hopefully.

"No, I didn't know that."

"Where have you been?" Lester demanded.

"We were out celebrating the fact that we're alive." Cutter retorted. "We didn't tell you because in your case it's not exactly a cause for celebration."

"Well it's a good thing there wasn't another anomaly alert. Stephen might not have been able to handle it on his own this time."

Cutter stiffened at the mention of his wife's lover and his estranged best friend. "What about Stephen?"

"Oh right, you don't know." Lester sighed condescendingly. "One of those giant scorpion things was loose in a public beach. We couldn't reach you and I had to call Stephen."

"Why would he be doing it on his own?" Connor asked.

"Because he won't accept help from us for some reason. Something about not trusting me." Lester turned to leave.

"Not trusting…" Cutter's eyes widened. "He doesn't know. Helen must have told him you were the traitor."

"If he doesn't know about Helen, he would still trust her." Abby stated, eyes dodging between Cutter, Lester, and Connor.

"He's still with her." Cutter breathed. "We need to warn him." All trace of anger over the betrayal was temporarily washed away with Cutter's concern for his…his _friend._

"Right, I can get someone to track his phone." Lester said. "You know, if the future predator didn't destroy our ability to do that."

"Cutter," Jenny ran up to the man who was standing knee-deep in the water under the dying rays of the sun, holding a soaking wet, and completely abandoned, cell phone.

"He's not here. Helen must have told him to throw his phone away." Cutter's voice was dead.

"We'll check his apartment." Jenny told him decidedly. Cutter shook his head.

"He won't be there." He predicted.

He could have told Jenny what Lester's men would find when they burst into Stephen's apartment later that day, knocking the door down when nobody answered; nothing. Everything was normal, as if Stephen had left at a moment's notice, intending to return in a few hours. Cutter could have told them Stephen hadn't been home since he'd left to fight the Silurian Scorpion. He could have told them that they would find one of Helen's undergarments lying around conspicuously as if she was taunting them. He could have told them they wouldn't find any other clues because there were none to find. He could have told them all that, but he didn't.

He'd already ruined Stephen's chances at a real life, away from the manipulating black widow known as Helen Cutter, so he might as well waste a few hours of everyone else's time on top of it.

"You need to rest," Helen chastised gently, resting herself against the wall. Stephen stood across from her, studying blueprints under a harsh light at a desk. He didn't know where or when they were, and he didn't care.

"I could get in here any number of ways. It would be so easy."

"He's not going back to the ARC, not after this." Helen said. "He's not that stupid."

"I have to keep trying. He'll go somewhere familiar, or take up a familiar routine."

"You know, that's what I love about you." Helen mused. "Your single-mindedness. It's refreshing."

Normally, a comment like that would have gotten a grudging chuckle or an amused snort. Not today. Stephen was determined to find a pattern in Lester's routines that would leave him helpless. Not that he would ever get the chance to make good on his vow of bloodshed. Helen would see to that. She could wear him down. And slowly, she would make him forget about his revenge. She would make him forget everything and everyone but her.


	2. Part 2

_No matter how we try, it's too much history_

_Too many bad notes playing in our symphony_

_So let it breathe, let it fly, let it go_

_Let it fall, let it crash, burn slow_

_~ Hurricane, _30 Seconds to Mars

Helen was gone again by the time Stephen woke up. He barely noticed it, taking time only to grab something to eat from the stash of fruit Helen had gathered before once again standing to face the wall, on which was taped pictures, time schedules, and receipts, for another few hours.

Over the past couple weeks Stephen had tracked Lester's movements like he was a wounded animal in the rain forest. He knew Lester's daily routine better than Lester probably did. In any city on the planet, Stephen was confident he could find Lester in less than a minute. And he would, even if he needed to go through every city on the planet until the day he died.

James Lester was a dead man.

Stephen's mind was starved of the finer emotions of mercy, happiness, and all those other things Helen disapproved of because it made a person weak in her eyes. Love was a shadow that flitted at the corners of Stephen. Sometimes it reminded him that he was not, after all, in this alone but in this with a beautiful woman who wanted to be with him. But that small voice was not much of a comfort to Stephen's dominant emotions – pain, anger, sorrow, and _revenge._

_I bet that's why she was attracted to you. You were like another creature to study._ The thick Scottish accent taunted him as it always did, mocking tones reverberating off the inside of Stephen's skull.

_I can relate. I used to fancy you, too. And now I don't. I guess you can probably figure out why, can't you? _The playful, lilting speech of a girl Stephen couldn't ever forget for reasons he didn't understand joined the Scottish tones.

_I don't think he _can_ figure it out, guys. You can only expect so much from those athletic types. _The joking tones of a boy confident in his own intellectual abilities and ignorant of any challenge to his manliness teasingly poked Stephen in his weakness.

_It's no use even trying to help someone like Stephen. _A matter-of-fact feminine voice sighed. _He's too set in his own path to consider that he might be wrong._

Stephen was used to the voices by now and didn't even bother trying to force them out of his brain. They were welcome, actually. A welcome delusion that four of the most important people in Stephen's life hadn't been killed when there was something he could have done to stop it. He could have saved them. He took down a Silurian Scorpion on his own, for crying out loud! But he knew that no what-ifs or could-haves could bring them back. He knew that no condemnation could revive them. He also knew that revenge wouldn't do anything, just make him feel that much emptier.

Even still, he would get revenge. Maybe the voice of Cutter was right and Helen was only attracted to Stephen's underlying primitive, aggressive nature. In that case, he owed it to her and the false hope that he would be able to move on when it was over to kill James Lester and make it look like it was done by an animal.

Four words shouldn't have been able to nearly whip the senior ARC team members into a near panicked frenzy, but they had. Connor was running checks on the ADD every ten minutes to make sure it hadn't been tampered with. Abby hadn't let go of Rex for the whole morning, even keeping her hand on his back while he used what Connor had christened the dino-litter box. Jenny was staring at Connor's website and coming up with cover stories pre-emptively for every creature she saw. Cutter and Lester were speaking in hushed tones in a civil manner. All in all, the world was coming to an end – and salt was nearly tossed when someone had jokingly suggested it. Even those who weren't up to date in the emotionally scarred category were feeling a bit on edge.

"Helen Cutter is back."

It was only said in whispers, but it was definitely said. By two hours past what had been dubbed "the incident" until further classification, everybody knew about it, from the field team to the janitorial staff whose lowly clearance didn't even permit them the satisfaction of an elaboration. Still, it seemed to be in the best interest of everybody if nobody knew that everybody knew even though everybody knew they all knew already.

"Have you heard?" Sarah wasn't sure how to breech the topic, so she just asked the question with the obvious answer.

Becker glanced over at her. Currently, they were the only two people in the break room. "What are you thinking?" He asked, opting as Sarah had to skip the niceties and jump straight into the conversation before someone like Nick Cutter showed up. Not because he was curious, though he was, but because he preferred not to bother with meaningless chit-chat.

"I'm thinking that Nick seems way too smart to marry a psychopath," Sarah was still whispering. Becker, although less obvious about it, kept his voice down as well.

"And that Helen seems too smart to be one by the looks of her file." He finished Sarah's thought for her, and she nodded. She looked at him, as if waiting for an answer that would make all of this make sense. "She seems to be a bit of a sociopath, actually." Becker tried to help. "But her goal isn't exactly out in the open. She seems almost to make it all up as she goes along."

"I know." Sarah sighed. "I've read over what Lester gave us on the previous missions involving Helen and I can't figure her out. Why would she want Nick to go with her? Did she still have feelings for him? And if she did, why would she have an affair with Stephen? And what happened to him anyway? Did he go with Helen?" She rubbed her eyes with her fists. "It's really confusing. But honestly, I don't know why people are so freaked out, she doesn't sound all that dangerous."

"Sometimes you just get a feeling for people," Becker fingered his holster. "I've seen people before who look like they wouldn't hurt a fly and then go and bomb a train station. A lot of the time, humans don't make sense."

"Tell me about it." Sarah rolled her eyes.

"Oh, hello." Jenny stopped short. "Am I interrupting something?" Becker and Sarah backed away from each other guiltily – well, in Sarah's case because Becker's expression really doesn't ever change from the smolder.

"No, no." Sarah said. "I was just leaving. Um, see you later, Becker."

Becker raised his chin in acknowledgement as the woman left. Jenny managed a nervous smirk.

"What was that about?" She asked.

"Nothing, really. Just talking about some old missions." Becker replied. "Do you want something?"

"Yeah, I've been staring at that computer screen for way too long." Jenny shook her head tiredly and let out a shaky breath. "Maybe some coffee will help." Becker took in her anxious appearance and nodded slowly.

"Decaf it is," He said.

Helen Cutter didn't look back to see if the door was shut as she and the two other figures moved into the alley. Two of the Cleaners were carrying a third, the one who had jumped off the building. A noise took Helen's attention away from them and she checked the device that was one of her most prized possessions.

"An anomaly has just opened." She said. Nodding at the dead Cleaner, she added; "Get rid of him. We have more important things to do."


End file.
